Blastomycosis in the Capital District of New York State: A Newly Identified Emerging Endemic Area.

Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and New York State Department of Health recently identified the Capital District of New York (CDNY) as an emerging endemic area for blastomycosis. However, no clinical or epidemiological description of blastomycosis in the CDNY has been published.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of blastomycosis cases at Albany Medical Center (AMC) and Albany Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) from January 1, 2000, through June 1, 2019.

Blastomycotic Osteomyelitis: An Unusual Cause of Hand Swelling.

Isolated blastomycosis hand infections are extremely rare, and are often clinically unsuspected, leading to delays in clinical diagnosis. Conclusive diagnosis often necessitates fungal cultures and histopathological demonstration of budding yeasts in tissues. In this report, we describe the rare occurrence of isolated blastomycotic hand infection, without any other organ involvement, in a 42-year-old male patient.

Pneumocystis pneumonia.

Pneumocystis (carinii) jiroveci pneumonia can occur in immunocompromised individuals, especially hematopoietic stem and solid organ transplant recipients and those receiving immunosuppressive agents, and is the most common opportunistic infection in persons with advanced human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The Pneumocystis genus was initially mistaken as a trypanosome and later as a protozoan. Genetic analysis identified the organism as a unicellular fungus.

Mumps exposure of a health care provider working in a neonatal intensive care unit leads to a hospital-wide effort that prevented an outbreak.

Background: Control measures were instituted in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Syracuse, New York, when a neonatologist became ill with mumps after returning from Africa. Two health care providers (HCPs) who worked with the neonatologist developed parotitis within 13 days of exposure. Outbreak control included furloughing the neonatologist and the 2 HCPs until after 5 days of the onset of parotitis, cohorting and isolating all exposed infants in the NICU, and implementing droplet precautions.

West Nile virus infection.

Purpose: The epidemiology, virology, and transmission of West Nile virus (WNV) are reviewed, and the clinical features, diagnosis, and treatment of WNV infection are examined.

Summary: WNV infection is caused by a flavivirus transmitted from birds to humans through the bite of culicine mosquitoes. WNV was discovered in the blood of a febrile woman from Uganda's West Nile province in 1937.